THE QUESTION.
After the shortage of masks, gloves and the difficult start of the vaccination campaign, the French are worried again and are wondering: will we have enough syringes needed to inject the vaccine against the coronavirus?
On Tuesday, Belgium said it could encounter a shortage between February and March.
In question, a European order which struggles to arrive.
In France, concern has spread to the social network Twitter where some have accused the State of having fallen behind in supply, a consequence, according to them, of the slowness of the vaccination.
Scientists have also expressed their fears in
Liberation
on the state of stocks set up by the government to meet the strong demand.
So should we be worried about a shortage of syringes?
CHECKS.
For each vaccine injected, two syringes are needed.
The first is used to dilute the vaccine with a dose of physiological saline.
The second is then used to make the injection.
You must of course change syringes for each person vaccinated.
The models used for injection are one-milliliter intramuscular syringes.
They have a sufficiently precise graduation to withdraw the necessary dose for a vaccine, neither too much nor too little, so that six doses of vaccine can be withdrawn from a single vial.
Since January 8, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has indeed recommended performing six doses with the same vial of Pfizer / BioNtec vaccine instead of the five recommended previously.
Read also: Vaccination: why the 6th dose of Pfizer bottles is not (yet) used in France
Twelve syringes are therefore needed for each vial of vaccine: six for the dilution (these do not need to be 1ml syringes) and six for the injection.
It is the latter that concern health professionals the most because they are the only ones that can be used for the vaccine against the coronavirus.
However, with the deployment of vaccination in France, the necessary quantity of this medical product will not stop increasing and its supply could be compromised if the orders from the State are not sufficient or are slow in coming.
This is not the case for the moment, assured Olivier Véran.
“We have 3.3 million needles, we will receive 2 million more in the coming days.
We have 4.6 million syringes with more to come.
This week, are destocked for the territories, 850,000 needles, 600,000 syringes, which are in addition to all the injection equipment already available by nature hospitals, ”
detailed the Minister of Health.
The Directorate General of Health is also reassuring and tells
Liberation to
have acquired,
“on behalf of the State, needles and syringes, in addition to doses of vaccine.
These stocks are in addition to those already held by the
health establishments.
Contacted by Le Figaro, Public Health France has not yet responded.
"We have what it takes to vaccinate around 20,000 people"
It is indeed the state that provides hospitals with the necessary stocks of syringes used for the vaccine against the coronavirus.
It is then up to the health establishments to distribute them, in the form of vaccination kits (containing needles, syringes and vials of vaccine) to nursing homes and vaccination centers.
A supply that is going well, testifies Jean-Pascal Collinot, head of the pharmacy department of the hospital center (CH) of Verdun (Meuse).
“The situation was resolved rather well at the beginning of the week because we received many of these syringes.
Today, we have more than 5,000, which is almost the number of vaccines we can inject ”
.
Julien Boyer, pharmacist and head of the medical devices department at the Valenciennes hospital center (North) confirms:
"Currently, we have what it takes to vaccinate around 20,000 people"
.
A relief all the greater as the first deliveries experienced a few hiccups.
The Verdun hospital has not received the right syringes.
Likewise for the CHU of Nice (Alpes-Maritimes) and the hospital of Valenciennes which received them with their syringes too short needles.
However, the latter was able to be restocked with the right models in less than a week.
“Fortunately, we had anticipated this type of problem by purchasing, in November, specific equipment for the vaccine.
We were therefore able to draw on our own stock, ”
says Julien Boyer.
Fragile stocks
Despite the routing of syringes to hospitals which is currently experiencing few pitfalls, Jean-Pascal Collinot and Julien Boyer however note a lack of perspective on future orders.
“We are counting on this supply from the State and we would prefer to have a few syringes aside to be more relaxed in the management of our own stocks.
In normal times, we do not drop below one week of stock, ”
explains Jean-Pascal Collinot.
If the Verdun hospital center vaccinates around 500 people a day (five days a week), it will have used up all its syringes in just two weeks.
"We started slowly so we had a lot of stock in front of us but it is becoming more complicated with the acceleration that is being organized and our vaccination schedule continues to fill up"
, he worries.
Same concern on the side of the hospital of Valenciennes.
"We do not know in advance how much material we will receive so we try to anticipate a little to have a source of supply in the event of failure of the first, the State,"
explains Julien Boyer.
Read also: Vaccine against Covid-19: the incomprehensible shortage of super-freezers on the way to be resolved
Having in mind the previous shortages, the establishment tried to organize itself to avoid running out of syringes.
Even before the first wave of the virus, the CH drew up a list of products whose demand would increase in order to strengthen its stocks.
An application used internally has even been created to
"visualize minute by minute the evolution of the number of drugs and medical devices available to us and monitor government orders"
.
The hospital has also undertaken to strengthen its stocks of syringes in addition to those provided by the state.
The number of syringes available allows him to ensure two to three days of vaccination in the event of a delay in deliveries from the State.
But by over-draining the hospital's stocks, the internal activities of the latter could be penalized if the syringes were to run out and the establishment encountered difficulties in obtaining supplies.
Suppliers solicited from all sides
Especially since placing orders with their traditional suppliers is increasingly difficult.
Solicited from all sides, they must already meet the strong demand from states like France.
Asked by
Le Figaro
, Becton, Dickinson & Co (BD), one of the largest syringe manufacturers in the world is nevertheless confident in its capabilities.
“BD has organized itself to respond to state orders, to date all orders are scheduled and will be fulfilled according to schedules agreed with each state.
We do not expect to be out of stock, ”he
says.
According to the scientific analysis company Airfinity, cited by
Liberation
, the current production of syringes amounts to 9.05 billion units per year and could reach 12.03 billion in 2021. But the vaccine against the coronavirus is not not alone in requiring syringes and if we add all the other uses, it would take more than 17 billion units to avoid any shortage.
At Becton, Dickinson & Co, we
claim to
have "
anticipated this demand and taken all measures to increase its production capacities for the upcoming vaccination."
We are now organized to produce 1 billion additional products over the next 12 months ”
.
"BD has increased production rates and maximized the operating hours of the factories which are now 24/7"
, adds one.
If Julien Boyer wants to believe in the lessons learned by suppliers since the start of the health crisis, he fears, like Jean-Pascal Collinot, that the explosion in global demand will create strong tensions on supply.
"We are already encountering enormous difficulties in ordering from our suppliers"
, confirms the pharmacy manager in Verdun.
Read also: Covid: is France at risk of a vaccine shortage?
However, there is a positive effect: shortages and tensions in the supply of medical equipment have shown that
“the notion of supply is crucial within a hospital.
When management asks to deal with low stocks and budgets, we can quickly find ourselves in difficulty in the event of a crisis.
So I think what will remain is the importance of having enough stocks, ”
says Julien Boyer.
The pharmacist nevertheless hopes that his service will soon be able to resume normal functioning.
"We had other clinical pharmacies missions on the way which have been reduced but which are nevertheless very important to develop"
.
IN CONCLUSION.
No, there is currently no shortage of syringes needed for the coronavirus vaccine, but hospitals in charge of delivering vaccination kits fear they will have to dip into their own stocks if state orders fail. could not respond to the acceleration of the deployment of vaccination.
Supply could in fact be slowed down by strong global demand, which will also continue to increase, increasing pressure on manufacturers.
